for legal aid … because there were a lot of asylum claims at that time the government was really throwing money at solicitors’ firms to get them to open immigration departments … to get solicitors trained up in immigration law so they could take on all these asylum claims,’ former immigration barrister Frances Webber remembers. The legal aid she talks about is money the state gives to people who need it to pay for advice or representation. It was available for people regardless of where they were born, so it could be used for people trying to regularise their status or claim British citizenship. But within about three years, New Labour started cutting back. ‘It was like this great tidal wave of money was then retreating, retreating, retreating,’ Webber says.
In 2007, the government introduced a flat fee for legal aid asylum cases, which meant lawyers were paid a fixed amount regardless of how many hours they worked on a case. ‘If you did go over a certain number and if you could justify that … then you would get paid by the hour,’ Webber explains, but getting to that stage was very complicated and difficult. These changes incentivised a factory-style process: encouraging ‘rubbish firms who do no work or do very little work’ and penalising those who took ‘great care’. Firms were expected to subsidise work on asylum cases with money they received from more straightforward legal aid cases. Then the Coalition government cut legal aid in 2013, including the money available for most immigration and asylum cases.2 ‘When we talk about legal aid cuts and we talk about other aspects of austerity,’ journalist Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi says, ‘we don’t also talk about immigration.’
New Labour had cracked down on fraudulent lawyers but, as costs spiralled and legal aid was hacked away, the chaos left people once again exposed to predatory lawyers. What has essentially been solidified is a two-tier justice system.
Reliable help is now extremely hard to come by. Two of the biggest not-for-profit immigration and asylum centres, Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ, formerly the Refugee Legal Centre) and the Immigration Advisory Service, closed in 2010 and 2011 respectively. Between them, they represented around 20,000 clients and employed hundreds of staff. The reason for their failure was massive cash issues; RMJ said this was brought on by changes to legal aid, which meant bills wouldn’t be paid until a case was finished. When they went under, they were owed £2 million by the Legal Services Commission, which ran the legal aid scheme in England and Wales from 2000 until 2013.3 ‘You just don’t have the bodies helping people, so you are going to see more rejections,’ explains Alison Moore, director of Refugee Women Connect, an asylum organisation in Liverpool, which caters specifically for women. ‘It’s not an area where you shouldn’t have a legal representative with you.’
But the issue is also the cost. ‘Initially they were very modest,’ Webber says of immigration fees. They were increased by a small amount when the Home Office claimed they weren’t covering administrative costs. But then they skyrocketed to the levels they are now, and they’re still soaring. In 2016–17, fees for settlement, residence and nationality increased by 25 per cent. They’re constantly changing, but at the time of writing, if you want to become a permanent resident of the UK, it will cost you £2,389.4 That’s on top of £50 for a ‘Life in the UK’ test, which you have to take when you apply to become a British citizen or for permanent residency and, if you’re required to take one, £150 for an English exam.
Playwright Inua Ellams had discretionary leave to remain and so had to refresh his status every three years, costing £900 each time.5 Being able to stay in this country, he tells me, is ‘expensive – it’s thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pounds’. It’s even gotten to the stage where the Home Office is charging £5.48 every time you require a response by email.6 This inevitably impacts poorer migrants disproportionately, people who might not be able to pay to get the reply they need, which risks subsequently preventing them from successfully resolving their claim.
Having cash is not an automatic guarantor to frictionless movement, but money lubricates the whole system. As of 2010, if you have £2 million or more to invest in the British economy, you can apply for an ‘investor’ visa – and if successful, come to the country for three years and four months and bring immediate family members. The right to settle after two years has a £10 million price tag, and £5 million buys the same entitlement after three years.7 For everyone else, the cost of it all can shape their whole lives.
While successive governments have extolled the virtues of family life, immigration controls have kept people apart. Since July 2010, migrants from outside the European Economic Area and their spouses in the UK have been separated by borders and the associated price tags. Under Theresa May’s plans to ‘get numbers down’, a UK citizen or settled resident (someone who has the right to stay in the UK with no time restrictions) had to earn £18,600 per year before tax if they wanted their non-EU partner to join them. The cost rose by £3,800 if that included bringing a child, and an extra £2,400 for every additional child.8
For decades, non-EU spouses and family members have been treated with suspicion when all they wanted was to join their loved ones: couples are quizzed over the most intimate details of their relationship and asked questions often based on racist stereotypes; children’s teeth and wrists are X-rayed to try to ascertain their age; and older relatives have been left continents apart from their closest family simply because they have a relative in the country they’re in – even if that person isn’t available, able or willing to look after them. It’s virtually impossible for elderly non-Europeans, whether grandparents, aunts and uncles or siblings, to come to live in the UK.9 And it’s not always easy to visit either.
It’s these strict, costly rules that left five-year-old Andrea Gada’s family desperate. Walking home from school with her father and brother on a winter’s day in Eastbourne, Andrea was hit and killed by a car. When her grandparents and aunt applied to come from Zimbabwe for her funeral, they were denied a visa. According to their local MP, then Liberal Democrat Stephen Lloyd, they were deemed ‘too poor’ to be granted a temporary visa to come to the funeral in the UK. The Home Office offered a more technical verdict: they hadn’t previously left Zimbabwe, couldn’t show they had regular incomes and therefore were considered at risk of absconding.
The three grieving relatives – Mona Lisa Faith and Grace and Stanley Bwanya – were desperate to be at Andrea’s funeral. They tried every solution possible, from offering to wear electronic tags to saying they would report regularly to a police station while they were in the UK. Recognising how unfair the rules were, people rallied around their cause. Lloyd guaranteed that, if they were allowed to enter the UK, he would personally make sure they left the country after the funeral, and members of the community raised £5,000 to help cover travel costs. But the government rejected the application for a second time. Then slowly their case began to make headlines. The attention resulted in a petition asking the government to reverse their decision. Over 120,000 people signed it. Finally, the Home Office relented. Without public pressure and media attention, this could have been just one more story among countless others in which people are kept apart by uncaring and inflexible immigration policies. ‘Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty’, wrote essayist James Baldwin, ‘knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.’10
Worryingly and somewhat inevitably, the few organisations that exist to help people struggling with their status are overstretched, laden with more responsibilities than they can manage and struggling to survive. But they are vital. ‘It’s become almost impossible for people with most kinds of immigration issues to get any advice,’ says Benjamin, who gives assistance to destitute migrants. ‘And it’s become much more difficult for people who’ve got that legal advice to find routes to regularising their status.’ And as successive governments have talked and acted tough on immigration, migrants – documented and undocumented – feel able to trust very few people. ‘Just from the point of view of people who have jobs in the sector and get paid to do advice work it’s really frightening. Caseworkers are burning out, and it’s only possible to imagine that services are just going to become more and more strained than they already are,’ Benjamin explains.
He calls charities that hold regular drop-ins for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees ‘advice factories’; they’re under immense amounts of pressure, people can’t